Shades of Affection
by Redtailedfox
Summary: She is his most valuable asset, and he is his favorite tool. Both warrant a strange sort of love. Elena/Klaus, Stefan/Elena, Stefan/Klaus, mentions of Katherine/Klaus.


A.N. Huh. I really don't know how I feel about this. It seems a little weird, but I was kinda bored… so feedback? Reviews would be nice! XD

Klaus can't remember the precise moment he realized he loved Elena. This used to worry him, but he has long since reassured himself it doesn't matter. In his more relaxed, contemplative moments he reflects on the doppelganger and guesses that the moment may have occurred during the Salvatore's ill-advised murder attempt, or more specifically when Mikael stabbed the girl he thought was Elena through the stomach. He isn't entirely sure- the moment is bright and sharp with too many contrasting emotions to count, and they overlap each other in a great symphony of discord and disharmony, making differentiating them just about an impossibility.

Still.

A thousand years can race by, and yet there are some things that are branded eternally into a person.

Klaus thinks on that moment, catches the flurry of feelings and sensations in his mind and runs through them clinically. The look of intent on Mikael's face gave him away a split second before the glint of the dagger flashed through the air to bury itself in the girl's flesh. Barely more than a second, and it was finished, but his horror imprinted into him forever, as did the look of stunned pain on Elena's- no, Katherine's- face, as Mikael's blade slid easily into her gut. He feels he is back at that moment, reliving it, and her pain is his pain, for her death would mean the end of everything. In that second he thought his world had collapsed, but then it was Katherine, and Elena was _fine_ and _healthy_ and his relief at this deception was only matched by his relief at his own survival and Mikael's fiery demise. Perhaps this is weakness, but he forces the intrusive thought away, dismissing it with a question: how can his love for her be weakness, if it is her that gives him strength?

There is no riddle in his love for her. It is clear and simple, although, like most seemingly straightforward things it breaks down into a million different facets, each with their own tint and flavor and hue. He focuses now on the obvious. Her blood broke the chains his mother forced over him, freed his true nature, and the gratitude he feels for that is sincere. And her blood now constantly aids him, giving his offspring new life, birthing his hybrid soldiers. She gives him a pack, a family, bears him his beloved children with every drop of blood shed in his benefit.

It intrigues him that his love only extends to Elena, not the vampire she is molded after. He lusted for Katherine, but he feels no love towards her. His passion for her has faded, and now he does not think he even feels hate. Only the echo of rage, and the slowly cooling desire to bring her suffering. He thought her would take more pleasure in her pain, but her agony gives him only the meanest of joys.

He feels little passion for Elena, either, despite his love. He wonders if it is strange, but decides it is not. She is beautiful, and he appreciates that, but he loves her for her red insides more than her lovely outsides. He wants nothing more than to protect her from any harm that might come her way, but if this is because her blood is precious to him, or his love is truly for her, he does not quite know. He suspects the reasons mingle.

Klaus is not the only one who loves Elena. He knows at least two others compete for her approval. Klaus is not familiar with Damon Salvatore, he only knows him as a nuisance and a problem with a particularly sarcastic streak, but Klaus knows Stefan better. Klaus thinks he knows why Stefan loves her, and it is for an entirely different reason. He was once close to the younger vampire, and their time in Chicago was filled with revealed secrets as much as it was champagne and blood.

Klaus formulated his own theory on Stefan's love for Elena, and he occasionally speculates on its accuracy. Either way, it entertains him. He thinks Stefan, poor, human, impressionable Stefan, was in love was Katherine centuries prior because she was beautiful and different and seemingly perfect. Klaus thinks that is what Stefan truly desires above all else- perfection, or at least as close to it as he can get. But his idealized image of Katherine was irreparably shattered upon his discovery of her hidden nature, and his love for her was thus diverted. Because she wasn't Katherine Pierce, gentle and human, she was Katerina Petrova, vampire, and in his naïve mind, the blood that ran down her hungry throat also rinsed away her goodness and perfection.

His heart still ached for the illusionary Katherine he had known, the pretend girl that he had wanted, and Stefan remained heartbroken and desolate, craving a shadow, until he found the pretty doppelganger and fell in love again. Klaus supposes this is because Elena is everything good that Katherine genuinely was, and everything good she wasn't. To Stefan, Klaus figures, Elena is Katherine whose darkness has been banished and whose sins have been smoothed away into nothing. She is human-Katherine, virtuous-Katherine, earnest-Katherine, kind-Katherine, and that is all that matters.

Once in a while, when Klaus is feeling fond or particularly magnanimous towards the girl, he thinks she deserves better than a man who constantly compares her to the other woman whose face she wears. But the unusual, tender affection will fade, and then he will feel nothing at all, nothing but apathy mixed with a dispassionate sort of amusement. And he will laugh, and move on.

But it is harder to move on from Stefan. He loves Stefan too, and there is a mystery in that love, because he cannot pinpoint the cause or the basis for it. It is frustrating, this puzzle. He knows why he loves Elena, and he thinks he knows why Stefan loves Elena. He just doesn't know why he loves Stefan.

It would be easier if his love for Stefan was abstract and cool like his love for Elena, but this love is raw and deep and cuts him to the core, searing at his soul (though he debates whether he even has one). This love is powerful, and can live side-by-side with something akin to hate, and live beside it easily. But this love begets mercy, for though he does not excuse Stefan for any of his numerous sins, he tolerates them.

Stefan has betrayed him time and time again, has tried to murder him, has plotted against him, has lied to him… all crimes that Klaus would deem punishable by death, even if committed by his own siblings.

And in his survival, Stefan is a rarity.

But he has let Stefan live, because he loves him, and he knows that if Stefan were to come to him and give him back the coffins, ask him absolution for his sins, ask for clemency, beg to be pardoned … Klaus would happily oblige, because he does not think he could ever really refuse Stefan anything, and because he wants Stefan by his side more than he wants him a corpse for his disloyalty. He thinks perhaps this particular feeling is similar to his motivation in keeping his family close and safe, instead of scattering their bodies into the sea, the very way he once told Elijah he had. He cannot bear to truly part with anyone he loves, in the violent, pervasive, helpless hope they will eventually love him back. They don't, but he has plenty of millennium to wait.

He does not know why he loves Stefan.

But he does.

And perhaps that's part of the fun.


End file.
